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Wednesday, May 15th, 2019

I completely agree with every single one of Terence’s recommendations here. The difference is that, in my case, they’re just hot takes, whereas he has actually joined the AMP Advisory Committee, joined their meetings, and listened to the concerns of actual publishers.

He finds:

AMP isn’t loved by publishers

AMP is not accessible

No user research

AMP spreads fake news

Signed Exchanges are not the answer

There’s also a very worrying anti-competitive move by Google Search in only showing AMP results to users of Google Chrome.

I’ve been emailing with Paul from the AMP team and I’ve told him that I honestly think that AMP’s goal should be to make itself redundant …the opposite of the direction it’s going in.

As I said in the meeting - if it were up to me, I’d go “Well, AMP was an interesting experiment. Now it is time to shut it down and take the lessons learned back through a proper standards process.”

I suspect that is unlikely to happen. Google shows no sign of dropping AMP. Mind you, I thought that about Google+ and Inbox, so who knows!

Monday, July 2nd, 2018

I was there for An Event Apart which was, as always, excellent. I opened up day two with my talk, The Way Of The Web.

This was my second time giving this talk at An Event Apart—the first time was in Seattle a few months back. It was also my last time giving this talk at An Event Apart—I shan’t be speaking at any of the other AEAs this year, alas. The talk wasn’t recorded either so I’m afraid you kind of had to be there (unless you know of another conference that might like to have me give that talk, in which case, hit me up).

After giving my talk in the morning, I wasn’t quite done. I was on a panel discussion with Rachel about CSS grid. It turned out to be a pretty good format: have one person who’s a complete authority on a topic (Rachel), and another person who’s barely starting out and knows just enough to be dangerous (me). I really enjoyed it, and the questions from the audience prompted some ideas to form in my head that I should really note down in a blog post before they evaporate.

The next day, I went over to MIT to speak at Design 4 Drupal. So, y’know, technically I’ve lectured at MIT now.

I really enjoyed giving this talk. The audience were great, and they had lots of good questions afterwards. There’s a video, which is basically my voice dubbed over the slides, followed by a good half of questions afterwards.

Lea had been in touch to ask if I would speak at this meet-up, and I was only too happy to oblige. I tried doing something I’ve never done before: a book reading!

No, not reading from Going Offline, my current book which I should encouraging people to buy. Instead I read from Resilient Web Design, the free online book that people literally couldn’t buy if they wanted to. But I figured reading the philosophical ramblings in Resilient Web Design would go over better than trying to do an oral version of the service worker code in Going Offline.

And with that, my time in Boston was at an end. I was up at the crack of dawn the next morning to get the plane back to England where Ampersand awaited. I wasn’t speaking there though. I thoroughly enjoyed being an attendee and absorbing the knowledge bombs from the brilliant speakers that Rich assembled.

The next place I’m speaking will much closer to home than Boston: I’ll be giving a short talk at Oxford Geek Nights on Wednesday. Come on by if you’re in the neighbourhood.

Sunday, April 22nd, 2018

If you’ve ever wondered what it would be like to be a fly on the wall at a CSS Working Group meeting, Richard has the inside scoop.

The consensus building is vital. Representatives from all the major browsers were in the room, collaborating closely by proposing ideas and sharing implementations. But most fundamentally they were agreeing together what should go in the specifications, because what goes in the specs is what gets built and ends up in the hands of users.

Wednesday, January 24th, 2018

A new webby meet-up in Brighton organised by Davs Howard. It’ll be one the first Thursday of the month at The Joker. I often find myself in The Joker on Thursday nights anyway (for the wings) so I’ll be heading along to the inaugural event on February 1st.

Thursday, October 19th, 2017

At the 14 minute mark I had to deal with an obstreperous member of the audience. He wasn’t heckling exactly …he just had a very bad experience with web components, and I think my talk was triggering for him.

Thursday, August 6th, 2015

I really enjoyed the most recent Indie Web Camp in Brighton. Some of us were discussing at the event how it’s a shame that it only happens once or twice year, considering how much everyone manages to accomplish at each one.

Well, to help keep the momentum going, Charlotte and I are going to start running a Homebrew Website Club meetup here in Brighton. It’ll take place every second Wednesday in the auditorium—or, if that’s not available, the Clearleft office—here at 68 Middle Street from 6:30pm to 7:30pm (although myself and Charlotte will be there from 6pm so feel free to show up early).

There’s no set agenda to these meetups. Simply put, it’s a chance to work on your personal site or side project while in the company of either people doing the same thing. We can help each other out, or just have a chance to chat and compare notes, very much in the spirit of the original Homebrew Computer Club …but applied to your own website.

The first Brighton Homebrew Website Club meetup is on Wednesday, August 12th. It would be lovely to see you there.

Monday, June 1st, 2015

Today was a day full of meetings, as so many Mondays are these days. But they weren’t bad meetings. These were necessary meetings. Not a single one of them was a client meeting. Instead I spent the day bouncing from one Clearleft meeting to another.

There was the weekly Monday morning meeting. We even managed to have that outside, before the raindrops started to fall. Then there was a resourcing meeting. Then I had a meeting with Anna about some potential upcoming work. Then there was the director’s meeting with Andy and Rich. Sounds cabalistic but it’s actually quite pedestrian.

Saturday, April 11th, 2015

I really like this idea of Jared’s. Finish up a meeting by having everyone write down the answers to these three questions in 60 seconds:

What was the big idea? (What was the most important thing you heard at the meeting?)

What was your big surprise? (What was the thing you saw or heard that surprised you the most?)

What’s your big question? (What’s the biggest unanswered question you have at this time?)

I can certainly relate to these findings:

We find that it’s not unusual to discover that different people in the room had just attended completely different meetings. People are surprised by things that other people take as a matter of course. People take away a different emphasis about what was discussed. People’s fears and concerns are reflected in their outstanding questions.